You'll See
by AstroPhantom
Summary: Allura's experiencing her first snow on Earth, and the other Paladins' reactions are far from what she's expecting. For Paladin Secret Santa 2k18


**You'll See - Paladin Secret Santa 2k18**

* * *

If there was one thing Allura had learned over the course of her life, it's that blindfolds were _never_ to be trusted. With enemies, it was a guaranteed instinct. With friends, it was usually assuaged by a sense of anticipation or excitement. But with _human_ friends?

The jury was still out on that one.

"You're sure that's on all the way?" asked Shiro from somewhere to Allura's left.

"I'm positive," Hunk answered. He was holding her right hand and guiding her forward with a hand on her back.

"Are one of you going to explain what's going on soon?" she asked. No answer, only conspiratorial hums of amusement.

Each step felt more jarring than the last. Hunk had insisted that she put on heavy boots and (what felt like) an equally-heavy jacket when she'd woken up minutes ago. As soon as she'd done so, he'd presented a scarf and asked, very politely, if he could blindfold her. She'd only agreed because it was Hunk, but now with the two most trustworthy Paladins guiding her yet refusing to answer her questions, she was certain this had been someone else's idea entirely.

The sound of a doorknob turning caught Allura's attention, and a blast of cold air greeted her a second later. Alright, the jacket just bought the boys some trust.

After stepping out onto what she was sure the front porch, and hearing the door click closed behind her, she felt Shiro's hand on her other arm. "Okay, now carefully, step...step...and step," he instructed as they guided her down the small flight of stairs to the front yard.

Or what Allura assumed _should've_ been the front yard.

Instead of the sturdy stone pathway she'd come to be familiar with, something... _malleable_ sunk beneath her boots. She skittered forward a few steps, only to step on more of the substance and be pulled back by the boys when she felt her balance, and her calm, slipping. And, now that she thought about it, shouldn't there have been a fourth step to the porch stairs? _What the quiznak was happening?_

"Surprise!" Shiro and Hunk sang out as the latter removed her blindfold.

Allura felt like she was dreaming.

Everything, every _where_ , was white. Bushes, human cars, other buildings, all covered in some sort of white substance. She looked down at the ground to see a scatter of her footprints impressed into it, and dared to first toe, then stomp on it with her boot. She yelped as she sank a few inches into it and recoiled, but the hands holding her kept her steady.

Keith, Lance, and Pidge were standing a few feet away, watching her with amused expressions and clearly not bothered by their changed environment.

Yep, humans and blindfolds. Officially not a good mix in Allura's book.

She looked between Hunk and Shiro for some sort of explanation, both for what was going on and why on their Earth they thought _surprising_ her with this would be a good idea.

"It's snow!" Hunk chuckled.

"Snow?" Allura repeated.

The other three moved closer, and Lance offered a deeper explanation. "It's frozen water that falls from the sky!"

He reached a hand out and looked up, and Allura cautiously did the same. Sure enough, little specks of white were drifting down, something she must've overlooked in her momentary panic before. They pelted her face with feathery kisses of cold, and she brought a hand up to gather some in her palm like Lance. When she looked at it closely, she could indeed see it already melting into water against the warmth of her skin.

She looked around at the cheerful faces surrounding her. Apparently humans _enjoyed_ this...snow, so much so that apparently they hadn't felt the need to warn her about it when they told her she would be experiencing her first Earth winter soon.

"So, what do you think?"

Allura glanced at her new surroundings once more. Now that she had an explanation, and _wasn't blindfolded_ , the substance seemed harmless enough. Sparkly even, if she tilted her head just so. That was a definite plus. "It's...alright," she answered, and a collective sigh of relief left the group. "Are we supposed to do something with it?"

A wickedly innocent grin popped onto Pidge's face. "Oh I'm glad you asked that question, Princess," she began, bending forward to scoop a chunk of snow into her hands. She carefully patted the snow together, then slowly stood up. "SNOWBALL FIGHT!"

The warning cry wasn't enough for Allura. She gasped out a stunned "ooh!" as Pidge threw a snowball squarely at her, hitting her in the chest. Her jacket softened the blow, but it still surprised her that such a soft substance could carry such a hard impact.

Pidge immediately took off running into the front yard, with the other Paladins laughing and chasing after her.

"Come join the fight!" Keith called back to Allura.

That was all the invitation she needed.

* * *

There was one thing Pidge hadn't factored in when she'd thrown that first snowball, and that was that Allura was freakishly strong.

Shiro knew better, and that's why he had wisely grabbed Keith and dragged him along into forming a team with her. Pidge boasted that she had "the sharpshooter's aim" on her, Lance, and Hunk's team, but it barely proved to be a fair trade-off.

The Paladins spent all morning and afternoon playing in the snow. After the snowball fight, Pidge and Allura called a temporary truce, and together they worked on what Allura kept calling a "snow entity." She tried to give it Altean ears, but after they kept falling off, Pidge explained that snow entities didn't have ears. Just, to Allura's horror, vegetables for noses and buttons for eyes.

Hunk had gone inside at some point to make hot cocoa for everyone. When he next stepped outside, they all thought he was going to announce that it was ready and call them in for it, but his look of concern seemed to foretell that his mind was on something far from the sweet beverages.

As the rest of the Paladins turned towards him, he began to explain, "Hey, guys, I just saw on T.V. that there's gonna be a blizzard tonight. They think it's gonna be one of the worst to hit the area in the last ten years."

"A blizzard?" asked Allura curiously.

"It's a really bad snow storm." Hunk glanced around at the already-falling snow and gestured to it. "It'll be like this, but like, a bazillion times worse, with a lot of wind and extremely low visibility."

A sense of danger mixed with disappointment rippled its way through Allura. Here she was just getting used to snow, even having fun with it, and now it was turning against her. She asked, "What should we do?"

Shiro was dusting off his hands when he chimed in. "There's not much we _can_ do except wait it out indoors."

Hunk took notice of her slumped shoulders, and added, "But hey! The hot cocoa is just about ready! C'mon in!"

As Keith, Lance, and Shiro followed Hunk into the house, Allura held Pidge back for a minute. She nodded towards their creation and asked, "Pidge, would you mind taking a picture of the snow entity for me? I left my phone upstairs and...I want to remember it."

Pidge grinned and pulled her towards it by the wrist, taking out her phone with her other hand. "I'll do you one even better." She positioned them so they were crouching next to the snowman, then held up her phone to take a selfie. "Say...freeze!"

"What-"

 _Flash!_

Allura barely managed to grin in time, but Pidge nevertheless cackled at catching her off-guard.

As they stood up, Pidge patted the snow entity on the head, saying, "Rest in peace, snowy one. You have a loooong night ahead." She turned to the princess. "Ours should be a bit more fun."

"What do you mean?"

"Oh, you'll see."

* * *

It was a lot warmer inside, that was certain. Allura didn't realize how cold she really was until she tried to unzip her jacket with numb fingers. It took a couple of tries to grab onto the zipper, but she finally got it.

Free from their heavy coats and boots, Allura and Pidge rounded the corner from the entryway into the living room and found quite a busy scene.

Keith was gathering stacks of pillows, blankets, and sheets onto the couch from all over the house. Hunk was just setting down a tray of cocoa and a bowl of marshmallows, while Shiro and Lance worked together to hang up some more string lights along the walls (not that they needed any more). And above it all, there was some festive music playing from the T.V.'s speakers.

Pidge joined Hunk around the cocoa, but Allura veered off to talk to Keith.

"I know you used to be the Paladin of the Red Lion, Guardian of Fire and all, but do you really need _that_ many blankets to stay warm?" she asked, taking a seat on the arm of the couch.

Keith chuckled as he set the last of the blankets down. "Nah, the others just had me get all these. It was either this or help with the lights." He mirrored her position on the other couch arm. "Besides," he smirked, "I don't need blankets to keep warm. I've got my own inner fire." He tapped his fist twice against his chest, putting on a face of false bravado.

They broke into laughter, and as they settled, Allura asked, "Well, why do _they_ need all this?" She gestured to the pile between them with a nod.

"You'll see."

She darted her eyes in confusion. "Why does everyone keep saying-"

"LANCE!"

Shiro's sudden outburst grabbed the room's attention, and everyone turned to see a length of string lights draped around his shoulders and head, his face set into an unamused scowl. Lance stood nearby, distinctly out of arm's reach, a mischievous laugh escaping his lips. He plugged the lights that were on Shiro into the existing line on the wall, and he lit up like a sparkling Christmas tree.

"Lights are done!" Lance proclaimed as he strolled over to the cocoa and picked up a mug. He sprinkled a few marshmallows over it and took a sip, letting it warm him.

Shiro, meanwhile, had taken off the lights and finished hanging them up. " _Now_ they're done," he determined pointedly. He gave Lance his best disapproving "Space Dad" glare as he fixed up his own hot cocoa, but the second he took his own sip the glare melted into a satisfied grin.

By now, everyone had a mug of cocoa in hand and had taken up a spot around the living room, letting the music reinvigorate them in tandem with the sweet taste of the drink.

As Allura drank hers, she glanced out the window. She could still see her and Pidge's snow entity, but it was all through a blurry white haze. Both nighttime and the storm were well on their way.

"So, what now?" she asked, turning to the group again.

"Now, we build a fort," Lance answered, twisting his mug in a hand draped over his knee. He was leaning against the side of the armchair Hunk was sitting in.

Allura stared blankly at him. Out of all the answers she might've expected to get, that was not one of them. Unsure of what to do with it, she simply asked why.

"To brave the elements, of course!" He gave her a goofy, adventurous grin.

Unimpressed, she looked around at her surroundings and pointed out, "Isn't that what the house is for?"

Lance shook his head in amusement. "Oh ho ho, dear Allura, no." He set his cocoa down next to him and got to his knees, raising a fist in front of him. "This fort will protect us from the harsh realities of the storm out there!" He bent one of his legs forward, and his voice rose triumphantly. "It will keep us cozy all night long!" He lifted his other knee forward and pushed himself up to a standing position. "And most importantly, it will be the ultimate reflection of our awesomeness!"

Shiro rolled his eyes while Pidge and Hunk echoed Lance's sentiment with a chorus of "yeah!"

Noticing Allura's persisting look of doubt, Keith tapped the stacks of blankets and sheets between them and explained, "What Lance _means_ to say is that we're gonna hang these up all over the living room and camp out under them tonight because of the storm. It's just a fun thing humans do sometimes." He shrugged, then smirked over at Lance, taking pride in having eased the confusion from the princess's mind. "You're welcome."

Lance simply stuck his tongue out in return, then made his way over to the couch and grabbed one of the blankets on top. "Well, it'll probably make more sense once we build it and you see it. So let's get building!"

* * *

By the time the group finished building the fort, the winds were howling outside. Shiro had started a fire in the fireplace to combat the eeriness of the sound, but at this point it was just bonus: combined with all the string lights, the fort was a paragon of coziness.

With such a large room to work with, the Paladins has used up nearly every square inch, save for a pocket of open space in front of the fire and T.V. To deal with the angle of the T.V. on the wall, they draped a "second-story sheet," as Pidge called it, above the center of the room. The rest of the sheets were held up by the walls, chairs, and couches, which themselves served as backboards for carefully-crafted piles of blankets and pillows for each Paladin. The covered entrance to the fort near the entryway was deemed as the new front door of the house, with anything beyond it being treated as if the storm itself had been brought inside. That left the arch between the living room and the kitchen as the only "usable" entrance to the fort, which was fine by everyone. A snack supply route was critical to the fort's success.

Once done, everyone gathered in the center of the fort around bowls of popcorn and other snacks, armed with their umpteenth round of hot cocoa. Spirits were incredibly high, and Allura felt the need to take advantage of the moment.

"A toast!" she began, raising her mug to the air. "To Fort Voltron, to snow, and to us!"

They all cheered with her and tilted back their drinks, then took up position amongst the blanket piles. For their first activity in the fort, they decided to watch a double feature of Christmas movies.

Just after starting the second movie, however, Allura found herself thrust into darkness. The movie and string lights went out, and the whole house seemed to go completely quiet. The only light left was the fire, its crackling pops the only sound standing between her and the wind outside. A chill ran through her.

"Power outage," Shiro muttered, setting down his drink.

"Aw yeeeeaaah!" Lance drawled out. Five sets of eyes stared blankly at him. "What?" He shrugged. "This makes things so much cozier!"

Allura begged to differ. She pulled her one of her blankets closer around her shoulders and willed herself to focus on the fire. The wind sounded like it was threatening to tear the house apart at any tick.

"Cozier or not, it looks like we're done with movies for the night," Hunk pointed out.

"What about Pidge's laptop? We could play movies on that for a while?" Shiro suggested.

Pidge immediately leapt into a defensive crouch in front of her "storage corner" of the fort where her laptop was. "Oh no," she hissed. "We're not wasting its battery on some movie while the power's out."

"Alright then...anybody got any other ideas?" Lance asked.

They all thought for a moment, until Allura piped up. "I think I remember seeing some games stored up in the guest bedroom?"

"Oh yeah! I forgot about those!" Hunk noted. He took a look around the group. "Alright, here's the plan. Allura and Shiro, you'll go upstairs and bring down all the games you can carry. Lance, you, Keith, and I will go salvage what we can from the kitchen and find some flashlights and candles. Pidge-" He turned to the Green Paladin to find her still placed protectively in front of her electronics. "Pidge...you watch the fire and hold down the fort. Literally."

An evil glint lit up her eye. "With pleasure."

With everyone tasked with a job, Hunk nodded. "See you on the other side," he said with a mock salute.

As Keith, Lance, and Hunk left for the kitchen, Shiro and Allura grabbed the one flashlight that was already in the living room for emergencies and made their way out the entryway entrance to the fort. As they stood up and stretched, Allura truly felt like she was outside again. With no power and now no fire nearby, the rest of the house was quickly losing heat.

Shiro led the way up the stairs with the flashlight and pushed open the door to the guest bedroom Allura had been staying in. When they opened the closet, there was indeed a bunch of board games stacked on the upper shelves.

"Ooh, I haven't seen some of these in ages," Shiro remarked in awe. He pulled down the top two boxes and handed them to Allura, but stopped when he noticed how quiet she was being. "Something wrong?"

Allura's eyes were trained on the window as she spoke. "I just feel uneasy about this whole thing. Shouldn't we be trying to restore power instead of playing games?"

He watched her for a moment before setting the boxes aside and grabbing her by the shoulders so she was facing him. "Hey, it's gonna be okay," he said gently. "I know this kind of weather is new to you, but believe me when I say that these kinds of storms happen all the time on Earth, and what we're doing is the usual human response. We won't be able to do much about the power until morning anyways."

"But didn't Hunk say this was going to be one of the worst storms in the last ten years?"

"He did. But for us that just means that we'll probably see a lot more snow than normal, and some older houses might get some minor damage." He quickly continued when he saw her eyes light up with renewed concern. "But don't worry! This house-" He knocked on the wall with his knuckles. "-is as sturdy as our lions."

She contemplated what he was saying as he added, "Again, I know this must be weird for you, but these kinds of storms are seen as fun and, at the risk of sounding like Lance, cozy. And in my opinion, they're great for team bonding. Trust me, we'll have so much fun tonight, you'll forget there's a storm at all. You'll see."

Allura had to bite back a groan at hearing that phrase again, but the feeling melted into a sigh. All her instincts were trying to kick in at the sense of danger she'd be getting from the blizzard and now the power outage, but the rest of the Paladins truly were having fun. She just needed to start trusting _their_ instincts on this. After all, this was their planet, and even if it wasn't, she knew they'd always have her back in the face of _any_ danger.

"Alright," she conceded, earning a smile from Shiro. Then in an attempt to get into the others' mindset, she asked, "So in that case, I take it we're on a _mission_ to get these games?"

Shiro laughed. "That's the ticket!"

They returned to gathering the games and by the time they crept back downstairs, Allura was feeling the energy she had felt earlier while playing in the snow.

Before they could re-enter the fort, however, Pidge stuck her head out the makeshift door covering the entrance.

"Password," she demanded.

Shiro and Allura shared a look of confusion before the latter spoke up. "There's no password."

"Yes there is. I made one up while all of you were away."

Shiro shook his head with a chuckle and decided to go along with it. "Alright...is it, 'Green Lion rules?'"

"Nope," Pidge denied.

"Okay, good, because it's actually the Black Lion that rules." He smirked at Pidge's evil eye. "Princess, any guesses?"

"Hmm..." Allura hummed playfully while looking to the ceiling for inspiration. "Is it, 'Pidge now rules the fort and will need someone strong to keep Lance's eventual rebellion in check?'"

There was a moment of silence as Pidge contemplated the implications of what she was hearing. She then held back the sheet and said, "Allura _only_ , welcome back to Fort Voltron."

Allura winked at Shiro with a cheesy grin and shuffled into the fort with her stack of games. Behind her, she could hear Shiro mock-whine at being left out still. "Hey, what about me?"

"What have you got to offer?" Pidge asked.

As their negotiations continued, Allura crawled to the center of the fort, where Lance, Hunk, and Keith were placing and lighting candles at strategic, non-flammable spots.

"I come bearing games!" Allura announced.

They cheered and Hunk handed off his lighter to Lance to help her set up one of the games. Allura had to laugh at the game he chose: its cover featured a man in a top hat that bore a mustache similar to Coran's, only it was white instead of orange.

Pidge eventually joined them again, with Shiro following her with a grimace.

"What did it take for you to get in?" Allura asked sympathetically.

Shiro grumbled, then answered, "I don't want to talk about it."

As if on cue, Pidge used her best announcer voice to say, "Attention, team! Tonight, we have a very special performance taking place live right here in Fort Voltron! Singing a Disney song of his choice against a curtain of fire, give it up for the one, the only, the legendary Shiro the Hero!"

The rest of the Paladins, who had become entranced with Pidge's introduction, began to clap and holler as they went along with the impromptu performance. Allura, on the other hand, had to cover the surprised laughter threatening to escape her as Shiro begrudgingly crawled over to kneel in front of the fire. It looked like she had gotten off easy when it came to Pidge's "passwords."

Before Shiro could do anything, Pidge shouted, "Wait!" and pulled out her phone to start recording the magic that was about to happen. "Okay, go!"

Shiro leveled her with a glare. "I thought you wanted to save your battery until the power returned."

"Oh, I do. But this needs to be recorded for prosperity."

With another grumble, Shiro ducked his head and took a deep breath, then stared back up at his teammates with as much seriousness as he could muster. As he began to sing, many of them were surprised to find out how pleasant his singing voice was. Combined with the fire and candlelight glowing against his skin along with the increasingly heartfelt poses he added in, his performance transformed everyone's mock clapping into genuine applause by the end of the song.

"Totally worth it," Pidge declared as she stopped recording on her phone, breaking Shiro out of his zone with another glare aimed at her.

As Shiro took up a spot next to Allura again, she complimented him on his voice, but he countered with, "Next time, _I_ get to be her guard against Lance."

"Against who now?" Lance caught from the other side of the fort.

"Nothing!" Allura waved off innocently, then smirked at Shiro. "You wish."

Everyone settled into a circle around the waiting board game in the center. As they all chose their pieces and Hunk explained the basic rules to her, Allura shook her little top hat in her hand. The Coran look-a-like on the front of the box had one, so she chose it in his honor.

The game itself started out innocently enough, but as time went on it was clear that either Keith or Lance was going to be the winner, and their competitive rivalry was fully aware of that fact. When Keith finally won, Lance simply threw his remaining money in the air and crossed his arms in a pout.

"Enjoy it, Mullet," he taunted, "Because that's the only win you'll be seeing all night."

"And the only one you'll even come close to," Keith bounced right back.

Hunk let out an impressed "ooh burn!" as Lance threw a pillow at Keith, and Allura leaned over to Pidge to ask, "Is this how Earth board games usually end?"

"Mainly for this one. Other ones are less...violent," she answered. Violent or not, she was enjoying every second of it.

As the pseudo-pillow fight broke the tension of the game, the group started looking through the stacks of boxes for the next one to play.

And so the night continued, with each Paladin earning a share of wins as they made their way through the games, the candlelight bouncing their laughing shadows off the fabric walls of the fort. When the fire eventually became _too_ warm and cozy, and everyone's eyelids started to droop, they all gathered together under a pile of blankets and finally dozed off on each other's shoulders.

When the smell of bacon and pancakes roused Allura the next morning, she blinked away the sleep from her eyes and stretched into a yawn. She sat up to find the string lights once again sparkling above her, and music playing on the T.V. again. It seemed the power had returned at some point in the night.

Shiro and Hunk's voices flowed in from the kitchen, but Lance, Keith, and Pidge still laid nearby, all in various degrees of sleepiness. Allura quietly got up and crawled to the fireplace, then popped her head up above the sheets to look out the window at the front yard. Or so she thought.

Where she expected to see a white-covered landscape much like it had been yesterday, she saw a layer of snow packed a third of the way up against the window. She stood up to try to see beyond it, but it remained level for as far as she could see. Where her and Pidge's snow entity had stood yesterday, there was now a tiny hill just barely distinguishable from the rest of the yard.

And it was _still_ snowing.

"Incredible, isn't it?"

Allura jumped at Hunk's voice from behind her. She wheeled around to find him kneeling below with a breakfast plate in each hand and a smile adorning his face.

"Here," he offered, handing her a plate as she crouched back down. They joined Shiro, who was delivering breakfast to the others before taking up his own spot in the circle again.

As he prepared to take his first bite, Hunk told everybody, "So it looks like we're snowed in officially now."

"You don't say?" Lance joked, taking a bite of his bacon and ignoring the evil look from Hunk.

Shiro took a sip of his cocoa and added, "Weatherman said we got four feet, and to expect another couple today."

"You know what that means, right?" Pidge posed to the group.

"Rematch?" Lance asked, eyeing Keith, who rolled his own eyes.

"Well, maybe," she continued. "But more importantly, it means more chances to make Shiro sing!"

Shiro froze, his forkful of pancake halfway to his mouth as he looked like he was considering diving straight out the window and into the snow. "That was a one-time deal, Pidge," he said as he finally took the bite.

"Perhaps. But I did get it on video, and now that the power's back on, that means the _wifi_ is also back on, and _that_ means that I can post this gem for the whole wide world to see," Pidge explained, dangling her phone just out of Shiro's reach.

Shiro, for what it was worth, was very calm as he set down his plate to the side and wiped his mouth with a napkin. As soon as he was done, however, he sprang to life and lunged after her phone.

As the group fell into a game of keep-away with Shiro and the phone, Allura found herself smiling and laughing harder than she had in a long time.

Shiro was right. Earth storms were fun.

* * *

 _So I don't know how or why I got so lucky to have blackkatjinx as my giftee for a second Voltron event, but here we are and I am so grateful. Happy holidays/happy new year, Jinx! I'm your paladinsecretsanta2k18 buddy! I swear, you always have the best prompts to work with and once again, I couldn't resist mixing a bunch of your prompts together (and taking full advantage of your "etc etc etc" ;P). This ended up being my longest one-shot I've ever written so far, and honestly, one of the most personally satisfying. So, thank you. I can only hope you enjoy it as much as I did writing it. :)_

 _As for the story itself, consider it a sort-of modern AU in which Allura has never seen anything resembling snow during Team Voltron's adventures throughout the universe. For all intents and purposes, snow is a rare/unique phenomenon to Earth. :P Okay, that all said, again, I hope you enjoy!_


End file.
